Dramatic Monologue

A single speaker addresses a silent listener, and the poem's real story is what the speaker reveals unknowingly.

Specifications & Metrics

type

Poetic form

origin

Victorian Britain

originator

Robert Browning (perfected); Tennyson ('Ulysses')

meter

Blank verse or irregular

Core Principles & Analysis

• Browning's 'My Last Duchess' is the form's defining exhibit in an assassin's own voice.
• The speaker's self-exposure, not the plot, carries the irony.
• Eliot's 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock' carried the form into modernism.

Sources

• Wikipedia: Dramatic monologue